JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET

[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
IX.  "ON THE POTTERS WHEEL"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

You complain of the monotony of your life. Day in, day out, the same round. Year after year the same path trodden to and fro; no horizon; no space or width; only the same lane of sky between the high houses on either side. What scope is there here for the evolution of noble character? What opportunity to meditate and achieve great deeds? Yet remember that the passive virtues are even dearer to God than the active ones. They take the longest learning and are the last learned. They consist in patience, submission, endurance, long-suffering, persistence in well-doing. They need more courage and evince greater heroism than those qualities which the world admires most. But they can only be acquired in just that monotonous and narrow round of which many complain as offering so scant a chance of acquiring saintliness.

(3) The Bulk of the Work is Done by the Potter's Fingers.

How delicate their touch! How fine their sensibility! It would almost seem as though they were endued with intellect, instead of being the instruments by which the brain is executing its purpose. And in the nurture of the soul these represent the touch of the Spirit of God working in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. He is in us all, his one purpose being to infill us with himself, and to fulfill through us "all the good pleasure of his goodness, and every work of faith, with power; that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in us, and we in him."

But we are too busy, too absorbed in many things, to heed the gentle touch. Sometimes, when we are aware of it, we resent it, or stubbornly refuse to yield to it. Hence the necessity of setting apart a portion of every day, or a season in the course of the week, in which to seclude ourselves from every other influence, and expose the entire range of our being to divine influences only.
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
IX.  "ON THE POTTERS WHEEL"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

The wheel and the hand worked together; often their motion was in opposite directions, but their object was one. So all things work together for good to them that love God. God's touch and voice give the meaning of his providences, and his providences enforce the lesson that his tender monitions might not be strong enough to teach. Whenever, therefore, you are in doubt as to the meaning of certain circumstances through which you are called to pass, and which are strange and inexplicable, be still; refrain from murmuring or repining; hush the many voices that would speak within, and listen until there is borne in on your soul a persuasion of God's purpose, and let his Spirit within cooperate with the circumstance without. It is in the equal working of these two -- the circumstance supplying the occasion for manifesting a certain grace, and the Holy Ghost supplying the grace to be manifested -- that the spirit soars, as the bird by the even motion of its two wings.
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II. GOD'S REMAKING OF MEN.

" He made it again." The potter could not make what he might have wished, but he did his best with his materials. So God is ever trying to do his best for us. If we refuse the best he gives the next best. If we will not be gold we may be silver, and if not silver there are still the earthen and the wood. How often he has to make us again!

He made Jacob again when he met him at the Jabbok ford, finding him a supplanter and a cheat, but after a long wrestle leaving him a prince with God. He made Simon again, on the resurrection morning, when he found him somewhere near the open grave, the son of a dove -- for so his old name Bar-jona signifies -- and left him Peter, the man of the rock, the apostle of Pentecost. He made Mark again, between his impulsive leaving of Paul and Barnabas, as though frightened by the first touch of seasickness, and the times when Peter spake of him as his son, and Paul from the Mamertine prison described him as being profitable.
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
IX.  "ON THE POTTERS WHEEL"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

I have been told of a gifted son who, when night has fallen, and his aged father has gone to the early couch of age, comes into the studio where the old man's hands had been busily engaged all day modeling clay, not without some fear that they are losing their skill, and removes all trace of senility or decay. So does God come to our work when we have done our best and failed, and when men have turned from us with disappointment. He perfects that which concerns us, because his mercy endures for ever, and he cannot forsake the work of his own hands.

Are you conscious of having marred God's early plan for yourself? His ideal of a life of earnest devotion to his cause has been so miserably lost sight of. Your career as parent or child, as friend or Christian worker, has been such a failure. The grand chord struck in your early vows at the marriage altar, or on the day of ordination, has been lost beyond recall; and the whole music has been so halting and feeble. For such science and the competition of modern life have little encouragement. There seems no alternative but to go off into the rear, and let others carry away the prizes that come so easily to them; while into the soul the conviction is burned: "I had my chance and missed it; it will never come to me again. The survival of the fittest leaves no place for the unfit. They must be flung amid the waste which is ever accumulating around the furnaces of human life." It is here that the gospel comes in with its gentle words for the outcast and lost. The bruised reed is made again into a pillar for the temple of God. The feebly smoking flax is kindled to a flame. The waste products are shown to be of extraordinary value, yielding the fairest colors, or providing the elementary principles of life.
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III. OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE GREAT POTTER.

Yield to him! Each particle in the clay seems to say "Yes" to wheel and hand. And in proportion as this is the case the work goes merrily on. If there be rebellion and resistance, the work of the potter is marred. Let God have his way with you. Let his will be done in you as in heaven. Bear it even when you cannot do it. Be sure and say "Yes." There are times when we are not conscious that he is doing right. Life is often like the gray aspect of nature in February, when spring waits just outside the portal longing to touch all things with her magic wand. It seems as if no one is concerned about "all the miles of unsprung wheat," or responsible for leaf or bud. Yet in myriads upon myriads of graves where seeds lie buried, God's angels are busily at work, rolling away stones and ushering in the new heaven and the new earth of spring. So when we have once committed ourselves to God, we must believe that he does not lose a single moment, but is ever hurrying forward the consummation of his ideal.
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
IX.  "ON THE POTTERS WHEEL"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

We cannot always understand his dealings, because we do not know what his purpose is. We fail to recognize the design, the position which we are being trained to fill, the ministry we are to exercise. What wonder then that we get puzzled and perplexed! We strive with our Maker, saying, "What makest thou?" or," He hath no hands." Yet surely it is enough to know our Guide, if we do not know which point he is aiming for in the long chain of hills. He knows all the mountain passes, and will take the easiest.

There is special comfort in these thoughts for the middle-aged and old. Do not look regretfully back on the wasted springtime and summer, gone beyond recall; though it be autumn there is yet chance for thee to bear some fruit, under the care of the great Husbandman. In all he inspires hope. He can turn the battle from the gate, and make the lost iron swim, and replenish the empty pitchers with new good wine, and restore the years the canker-worm has eaten, and make failures into victories. He who was able to transform the cross from a badge of shame into the sign of victory and glory must surely be able to take the most hopeless, disreputable, and abandoned lives, and make them bloom with flowers heavy with fragrance and full of blessed promise. Only let him have a free hand. Whatsoever he says, do it, or suffer it to be done. Seek forgiveness for the past, then restoration and remaking at his hand. Reckon on God, and according to your faith it shall be done unto you.

TO BE CONTINUED.....
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
X.  THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(Jeremiah 20:9.)

"There is a stay, and we are strong!
Our Master is at hand
To cheer our solitary song
And guide us to the strand!
Or if, for our unworthiness,
Toil, prayer, and watching fail,
In disappointment thou canst bless,
So love at heart prevail!"
KEBLE.

Jeremiah's nature reminds us of the AEolian harp, which is so sensitive to the passing breeze, now wailing with sorrow, now jubilant with song: so delicately strung, so sympathetic, so easily affected by every passing circumstance, was the soul of the prophet. The whole book mirrors the changefulness of his mood, as the ocean the perpetual heavens outspread above it -- now blue as the azure sky, and again dark with the brooding storm.

There are many indications of this in the chapters before us. For instance there is the exclamation, "Cursed be the day wherein I was born .... Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto thee .... Wherefore was I born to see labor and sorrow?" (Jeremiah 20:14-18 ). But in the same breath there is the heroic outburst, "The Lord is with me as a mighty one and terrible; therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail" (Jeremiah 20:11). How great the contrast between these moods! In the first he is traversing the valley of the shadow, where the dark trees shut out the sky, and the swollen torrent rushes turbidly through the gorge; in the second he stands upon the heights where the sun shines, and to the far horizon the landscape lies outspread, its cornfields goldening in the summer sun.

The same contrast appears in this verse. There we find the half-formed resolution to make no further mention of God, and to speak no more in his name. Then he is instantly aware of his inability to control the passionate outburst of the Spirit within. "There is in mine heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain" (R.V.). Oh, wonderful heart of man! who can understand thee, who can estimate the heights to which thou canst rise, or the depths to which thou canst sink? What an infinitude of bliss and of sorrow is within thy compass! How radiant thy heavens, how dark thine abyss! It is well for us when we learn to distinguish between the life of our emotions and that of our will, and resolve to live no more in mood or emotion, but to build the edifice of our life upon the granite of the obedient will.
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
X.  THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OUT OF WHICH THESE WORDS SPRANG.

Jeremiah's half-farmed Resolution. -- " I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name." Not improbably by this time Nineveh had fallen. For six hundred years she had ruled surrounding nations with a rod of iron tyranny, exerting an imperial sway with merciless cruelty. At last her time had come. A vast host gathered from Asia Minor as far as the shores of the Black Sea, from the entire valley of the Tigris, from Armenia, Assyria, and the wandering tribes of the desert, and settled down on her as swarms of hornets on a putrid carcass. For two years the siege had lasted under the direction of the trusted general of the last king of Nineveh, Nabopo-lassar, whose son, Nebuchadnezzar, was destined to be the "hammer of God." Rumors of this catastrophe were spreading through the world, carrying everywhere a sense of relief and foreboding -- relief that the tyrant was down, foreboding as to who should take his place.

At this time Egypt was in the zenith of her power. Amid the decrepitude of Nineveh, Pharaoh had seized the opportunity of extending his empire to the banks of the Tigris. The kingdom of Judah, like all neighboring nations, owned, at least nominally, the king of Egypt as suzerain. Confidence in the proximity and prowess of his great ally encouraged Jehoiakim in his career of shameless idolatry and sin. The whole land, as we have seen, was corrupt.

Jeremiah, the foremost of the little band that remained true to the best traditions of the past, never lost an opportunity of lodging his complaint or striving to resist the downward progress of his people. In doing this he aroused an ever-growing weight of opposition. The plot of his native town of Anathoth was the first volcanic outburst, to be followed by a long series of plots and snares and manifestations of hatred on the part of those for whom he would have gladly given his life as he daily gave his prayers. He sat alone, cast out by prophet and priest, by court and people.

"Come," they said on one occasion, "and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet." He was a laughing-stock all the day. Every one mocked him. The word of the Lord was made a reproach to him and a derision continually. His associates and those with whom he came in contact watched for his halting, and whispered that peradventure he would be enticed so that they should prevail against him and take their revenge on him.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
X.  THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

Matters culminated finally in the episode of Jeremiah 19:1-15, 20. Beneath a divine impulse he procured a common earthen bottle, and gathering a number of the elders, led them forth into the Valley of Hinnom, beside the gate of the potsherds. On this spot the refuse of the city was perpetually exposed to the foul birds and the wild dogs. It was a place of abhorring and loathsomeness. There he uttered a long and terrible indictment of the sins of his people, accompanying it with predictions of the certain and irrevocable doom to which they were hurrying. The men of Jerusalem would fall there by the sword before their enemies; in the straitness of the siege they would eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters. The city itself would fall into ruins of blackened stones, and the surrounding valley be filled with the carcasses of the slain making banquet for the fowls of the heaven and the beasts of the earth. To emphasize his words he broke the potter's vessel, pouring forth its contents in token that the blood of his countrymen would be shed to bedew and saturate the soil.

Not satisfied with this, he returned from Tophet and stood in the court of the Temple, perhaps on the steps that led up to the court of the priests. Crowds of people were probably at the time engaged in some sacred rite; it may have been the time of one of the great feasts. When his voice was heard, a vast concourse must have gathered, whose angry faces and vehement gestures indicated the intensity of their dislike to the man who cast the shadow of impending destruction over their gayest hours. The endurance of one of them at least had at last reached its limit. Pashur, the chief governor of the Temple, to whose jurisdiction its order was intrusted, gathering a band of Levites or Temple servants, seized the prophet, threw him on the pavement, scourged him after the Eastern fashion, and finally thrust him into the stocks, leaving him there the whole night, to the ridicule and hatred of the populace, to the cold night and the prowling dogs.

In the morning Pashur appears to have repented of his harsh treatment, and to have released the prophet, whose strong spirit was not for a moment cowed by the indignity and torture to which he had been exposed. Turning on his persecutor, he told him that he would live to be a terror to himself and all his friends; that all Judah would be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, now mentioned for the first time; that the people would be carried captives to Babylon, and slain there with the sword; and that all the riches and gains of the city, and all the precious things thereof, and all the treasures of the king of Judah, should be given into the hand of their enemies to carry to Babylon. It is this fourfold mention of Babylon that gives color to the suggestion that Nineveh had fallen, and that the strong hand of Nabopolassar and his son was beginning to show itself, and to wield the scepter which was falling from the faltering grasp of one of the oldest and greatest empires of antiquity.

Set free, Jeremiah went to his home, and there poured forth that marvelous combination of heroic faith and wailing grief which is recorded for us that we may know the weakness of his nature and learn how earthen was the vessel in which God had placed his heavenly treasure. No brazen wall was he, but a reed shaken by the wind; no wise, strong hero, but a child. What he did and said when face to face with his age was due to no native strength or heroism; as he says himself, his was "the soul of the needy" (Jeremiah 20:13, R.V.).
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
X.  THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

What a tale could be told by the walls of the secret chambers of God's greatest saints! What litanies of tears and sighs and broken sentences have beaten against them in successive billows of heart-rending sorrow! Take, for instance, that outburst of Luther on the eve of his appearance before the Diet of Worms. Those who have seemed strongest and most rock-like in the presence of their fellows have sunk most helplessly on the ground in solitude, confessing that none were so weak and helpless as they.

Our prophet seems to have gone even farther. Then came a suggestion to his heart that he should relinquish his labors and renounce public for private life. Why struggle any more against the inevitable? Why set himself to convince those who would not be convinced, and who repaid his love with hate? Why surrender name and comfort and human love for the thankless task of endeavoring to stem his people's career? He came to the point of saying, "Send whom thou wilt send; intrust thy commission to some stronger soul, cast in a more heroic mold; let me go back to the seclusion and humble toils of my village home."

Not dissimilar have been the appeals of God's servants in every age, when they have measured their weakness against the strength of the evils they have combated, and have marked their limited success: the handfuls of seed wasted upon barren soil; the word spoken in the ear of the wind; the futility of opposing an Ahab or a Jezebel; the ingratitude of those whom they would have gladly saved. They have been disposed to cry with the greatest of the prophets, "It is enough; let me die!"

II. THE IRRESISTIBLE IMPULSE.

" There is in mine heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain." "O Lord, . . . thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed." Three things arrest us here.

(1) The Prophet's Habit of Turning from Man to God.

Throughout the book there are so many indications of the close fellowship in which he lived with Jehovah. God seemed always nigh at hand. His ear always bent down to the least whisper of his servant's need. Compelled to live much alone, this much-suffering man acquired the habit of counting on the companionship of God as one of the undoubted facts of his life. He poured into the ear of God every thought as it passed through his soul. He spread forth his roots by the river of God, which is full of water. There was no fear, therefore, that his leaf would become sere in the summer heat, or that he would cease from yielding fruit in the year of drought. The Lord was his strength, his stronghold, and his refuge in the day of affliction, and to him he opened his cause. "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise Let me not be dismayed or ashamed" (Jeremiah 17:14-18 ).
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
X.  THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

Let us seek this attitude of soul, which easily turns from man to God; not foregoing the hours of prolonged fellowship, but, in addition, acquiring the habit of talking over our life with One who does not need to be informed of what transpires, but awaits with infinite desire to receive the confidence of his children. Talk over each detail of your life with God, telling him all things, and finding the myriad needs of the soul satisfied in him.

(2) The Burning Fire.

We have sometimes seen a little steamer, like "The Maid of the Mist" at the foot of the Falls of Niagara, resisting and gaining upon a stormy torrent madly rushing past her. Slowly she has worked her way through the mad rush of waters, defying their attempt to bear her back, calmly and serenely pursuing her onward course, without being turned aside, driven back, or dismayed. And why? Because a burning fire is shut up in her heart, and her engines cannot stay, because impelled in their strong and regular motion. Similarly, within Jeremiah's heart a fire had been lit from the heart of God, and was kept aflame by the continual fuel heaped on it. The difficulty, therefore, with him was, not in speaking, but in keeping silent -- not in acting, but in refraining.

This sheds some light upon the prophetic impulse, and helps us to understand what the Apostle Peter meant when he said, "Holy men of God spake as they were borne along by the Holy Ghost." It was as though the current of thought and feeling came mightily from without, and, passing through them, swept them forward irresistibly. In this way it often happened that the prophets did not understand words which were put into their hearts by the Spirit of God, and of whose full meaning they were ignorant.

But, after all, our main desire is to know how we may have this heart on fire. We are tired of a cold heart toward God. We complain because of our sense of effort in Christian life and duty; we would fain learn the secret of being so possessed by the Spirit and thought of God that we might be daunted by no opposition, abashed by no fear. The source of the inward fire is the love of God, shed abroad by the Holy Ghost; not primarily our love to God, but our sense of his love to us. The coals of juniper that gave so fierce a heat to the heart of a Rutherford were brought from the altar of the heart of God. If we set ourselves with open face toward the cross, which, like a burning lens, focuses the love of God, and if, at the same time, we reckon upon the Holy Spirit -- well called the Spirit of Burning -- to do his wonted office, we shall find the ice that cakes the surface of our heart dissolving in tears of penitence, and presently the sacred fire will begin to glow. Then the love of Christ will constrain us. Whether we be beside ourselves or be sober will not be the subject of our consideration; but his Spirit, the thought of what he desires, the passion of fulfilling his will, will destroy the fire of self-esteem, and replace it with the sacred fire of passionate devotion.

When that love has once begun to burn within the soul, when once the baptism of fire has set us aglow, the sins and sorrows of men -- their impieties and blasphemies, their disregard of God, of his service and of his day, their blind courting of danger, their dalliance with evil -- will only incite in us a more ardent spirit. To see the multitudes rushing to destruction, to hear the boast of the blasphemer, the taunt of the infidel, the cry of the oppressed, the ribald mirth of the profane, the desecration of all that is holiest and best in man; to think of the grief caused to the Spirit of God, the dishonor done to him; to anticipate the outer darkness, the undying worm, the bottomless pit -- surely these will be enough to fan the smoldering embers till they break out in the least emotional; as when Jeremiah said that he felt an inner impulse, to restrain which was a weariness, to stay from obeying which was a sin.
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
X.  THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(3) The Prophet's Safety.

" The Lord is with me as a mighty one and terrible; therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail." The presence of God is salvation. When Ezekiel describes the plot of Edom to possess herself of the land of the chosen people, he indicates by a single phrase the futility of the attempt, saying significantly, "Whereas the Lord was there" (Ezekiel 35:10). It was enough, though Israel was in exile, that God's Spirit was brooding over their desolate land. He guarded its frontiers and filled its vacant spaces, and could not be dispossessed. His presence made every attempt to capture it abortive.

Thus Jeremiah felt. He might be the weakest of the weak, having neither might, nor wisdom, nor power of speech, apparently the easy prey of Pashur and Jehoiakim; but since God was with him, casting the mantle of his protection around his servant, and pledging himself to be his stronghold and house of defence, he was invulnerable.

O weak and trembling soul, if thou art true to God, God is with thee, besetting thee behind and before, and covering thee with the hollow of his hand. Thou shalt be like the city of the great King -- the kings may assemble, but so soon as they see thee they shall be stricken with terror and pass away, while thou shalt be a quiet habitation, a tent that shall not be removed, the stakes whereof shall never be plucked, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. "This God is our God forever and ever: he will be our guide even forevermore" (Psalms 48:14, R.V., marg.).

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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
XI.  AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESS, TUMULTS.
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(Jeremiah 26.)

"I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.

"Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings --
I know that God is good."
WHITTIER.

JEHOIAKIM was, perhaps, the most despicable of the kings of Judah. Josephus says that he was unjust in disposition, an evil-doer, neither pious toward God nor just toward men. Something of this may have been due to the influence of his wife Nehushta, whose father, Elnathan, was an accomplice in the royal murder of Urijah. "Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God." Such is the inspired epitaph by the chronicler.

Jeremiah appears to have been constantly in conflict with this king, and probably the earliest manifestation of conflict that could not but subsist between two such men occurred in connection with the building of Jehoiakim's palace. Though his kingdom was greatly impoverished with the heavy fine of between forty and fifty thousand pounds imposed by Pharaoh Necho after the defeat and death of Josiah, and though the times were dark with portents of approaching disaster, yet he began to rear a splendid palace for himself, with spacious chambers and large windows, floors of cedar and decorations of vermilion. As Elijah confronted Ahab, so did Jeremiah confront the young king with his terrible woes: "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by injustice; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not his hire .... Thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy dishonest gain, and for oppression, and for violence.'' He further reminded him that the stability of Josiah's throne depended not on the splendor of his palace, but upon the justice with which he judged the cause of the poor and needy (Jeremiah 22:13, etc.).

Clearly such a monarch must have entertained a mortal hatred toward the man who dared to raise his voice in denunciation of his crimes; and, like Herod with John the Baptist, he would not have scrupled to quench in blood the light that cast such strong condemnation upon his oppressive and cruel actions. An example of this had been recently afforded in the death of Urijah, who had uttered solemn words against Jerusalem and its inhabitants in the same way that Jeremiah had done. Such fury had been excited by his words that he had been obliged to flee to Egypt, from whence the king had secured his extradition, that he might avenge his bold denunciation by the sword and fling his body into the graves of the common people. Small shrift, then, could be expected by Jeremiah, if the king dared to take measures against him. But it would appear that this time at least his safety was secured by the interposition of influential friends among the aristocracy, one of whom was Ahikam, the son of Shaphan (Jeremiah 26:20-24).
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
XI.  AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESS, TUMULTS.
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

I. THE DIVINE COMMISSION.

Beneath the divine impulse Jeremiah went up to the court of the Lord's house, and took his place on some great occasion when all the cities of Judah had poured their populations to worship there. Not one word was to be kept back. We are all more or less conscious of these inward impulses; and it often becomes a matter of considerable difficulty to distinguish whether they originate in the energy of our own nature or are the genuine outcome of the Spirit of Christ. It is only in the latter case that such service can be fruitful. And here for a moment we will turn aside to see how the heart of man may become the medium through which God can pour his thoughts on men, and the way by which we may recognize his inward prompting.

There is no greater enemy of the highest usefulness than the presence of the flesh in our activities. There is no department of life or service into which its subtle, deadly influence does not penetrate. We have to encounter it in our unregenerate life, when its passions reveal themselves, brooking no restraint. We meet it after we have entered upon the new life, striving against the Spirit, and restraining his gracious energy. We are most baffled when we find it prompting to holy resolutions, and efforts after a consecrated life. The Apostle Paul calls this the unequal marriage of the flesh, or self-life, with the holy law of God  -- a union which brings forth fruit unto death. And, lastly, it confronts us in Christian work, because there is so much of it that in our quiet moments we are bound to trace to a desire for notoriety, to a passion to excel, and to the restlessness of a nature which evades questions in the deeper life by flinging itself into every avenue through which it may exert its activities.

There is only one solution to these difficulties. By the way of the cross and the grave we can alone become disentangled and discharged from the insidious domination of this evil principle, which is accursed by God, and hurtful to holy living, as blight to the tender fruit. In the cross of Jesus, when he died in the likeness of sinful flesh, God wrote his curse upon every manifestation of selfish and fleshly energy; and now it remains for each of us to appropriate that cross, to accept the divine sentence, to lie in the grave where the voices of human ambition and adulation cannot follow us, to oppose the silence of death to the workings of our evil self. Not, however, to stay there; but to pass up by the grace of the Holy Ghost into the pure resurrection air and light, where no face is visible but that of the risen Saviour, where no voice is audible save his, and where in the hush of perfect fellowship the spirit becomes able to discern the wish of its Lord.

II. THE MESSAGE AND ITS RECEPTION.

There was a twofold appeal in the words Jeremiah was commissioned to deliver on this great occasion, when the Whole land stood intent to hear. On the one side, by his lips, God entreated his people to repent and turn from their evil ways; on the other, he bade them know that their obduracy would compel him to make their great national shrine as complete a desolation as the site of Shiloh, which for five hundred years had been in ruins. It is impossible to realize the intensity of passion which such words evoked. They seemed to insinuate that Jehovah could not defend his own, or that their religion had become so heartless that he would not. Prophets and priests had assured the people that the very presence among them of Jehovah's Temple was a guaranty of their safety, and to suggest that a fate might overtake them like that which in the days of Samuel made the ears of every listener to tingle seemed the height of impertinence. "Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak unto all the people," that he found himself suddenly in the vortex of a whirlpool of popular excitement. Thus it befell Paul in after-days, when the presumption that he had defiled the holy place produced so intense a paroxysm of popular feeling that all the city was moved, and the people ran together and laid hold on him, and dragged him out of the Temple, so that he was with difficulty rescued by a regiment of Roman soldiers, who bore him by main force from the violence of the crowd, the multitude following and crying out, "Away with him!" (Acts 21:27-36). There is little doubt that Jeremiah would have met his death in a similar emeute, had it not been for the prompt interposition of the princes.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
XI.  AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESS, TUMULTS.
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

Such is always the reception given on the part of man to the words of God. We may gravely question how far our words are God's, when people accept them quietly and as a matter of course. The Word of God to those that hug their sin can only be as fire, a hammer, and a sharp, two-edged sword. And here again is a certain test whether our message is the product of our own fancy, or the burden of the Lord. That which men approve and applaud may lack the King's seal and be the substitution on the part of the messenger of tidings which he deems more palatable, and therefore more likely to secure for himself a larger welcome.

III. WELCOME INTERPOSITION.

The princes were seated in the palace, and instantly on receiving tidings of the outbreak came up to the Temple. Their presence stilled the excitement, and prevented the infuriated people from carrying out their design upon the life of the defence-less prophet. They hastily constituted themselves into a court of appeal, before which prophet and people were summoned. The priests and prophets acted as the exponents of the people's wish, and demanded sentence of death, turning from the court to the people to ask their concurrence. Then Jeremiah stood on his defence. His plea was that he could not but utter the words with which the Lord had sent him. Again he called upon the people to amend their ways. He acknowledged that he was in their hands, but he warned them that innocent blood would bring its own Nemesis upon them all, and at the close of his address he reaffirmed his certain embassage from Jehovah.

This bold and ingenuous defence seems to have turned the scale in his favor. The princes gave their verdict: "This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God." And the fickle populace, swept hither and thither by the wind, appear to have passed over en masse to the same conclusion; so that princes and people stood confederate against the false prophets and priests. The conclusion thus gained was further confirmed by the voice of certain of the elders of the land, who had come from all the cities of Judah, and who reminded the people that the good King Hezekiah had acted very differently to the prophet Micah in listening to his remonstrances, entreating the favor of the Lord, and securing the reversal of the divine sentence.

Thus does God hide his faithful servants in the hollow of his hand. No weapon that is formed against them prospers. They are hidden in the secret of his pavilion from the strife of tongues.

In a previous chapter we saw that Egypt was mistress of all lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. But as soon as the Chaldeans had established their kingdom upon the ruins of Nineveh, they turned their attention to wrest from Pharaoh Necho some portion of his vast empire. Jeremiah had long before seen that this would be the case, and had depicted in graphic imagery the scene and issue of the awful battle at Carchemish, by the Euphrates, where the two mighty peoples wrestled for the supreme power of the world.

He heard the call to arms. He beheld the horses heavily armed, and the horsemen with flashing spears and coats of mail. The Egyptian hosts, like the Nile at flood, pour themselves against the solid ranks of their foes; her tributaries from Cush and put, together with the Ludim, famous at handling the bow, strive in vain to check the flight of Egypt's mighty men. They flee apace, and look not back; the sword devours and drinks its fill of blood; the cry of the fugitive hosts fills the earth with clamor; and the mighty stumble, never to rise (Jeremiah 46:1-12). Egypt never rallied again, nor dared to do more than strive against the yoke that Nebuchadnezzar, with imperial might, fastened upon her.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
XI.  AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESS, TUMULTS.
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

After this there was nothing to stay the onset of Nebuchadnezzar, who probably had been associated in the kingdom with his aged father, and the first year of whose reign would therefore coincide with the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 25:1). Like a leopard, to use the expression of Habakkuk, who at this time was beginning to exercise his ministry, the young king leaped upon the peoples that had been subject to Egypt and had aided in her expedition. And, as the tidings of his prowess spread through the world, Jeremiah foretold that he would be the scourge of God to punish the abounding wickedness of the peoples: "I will send unto Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring him against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations .... And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years."

In his first invasion of Judah the king of Babylon contented himself with binding Jehoiakim in fetters to carry him to Babylon, though he seems afterward to have changed his intention, and to have restored him to his throne as his vassal, taking an oath of allegiance (Ezekiel 17:12-13). He stripped the Temple of its precious vessels to enrich the house of his god at Babylon, and carried into captivity several of the mighty of the land, among them Daniel and his three friends (Daniel 1:1-2). He then hastened back to Babylon, summoned thither by the tidings of the death of his father, Nabopolassar.

For three years Jehoiakim remained faithful to his oath (2 Kings 24:1); then he was deluded by the hope of independence, based on the hope of forming a confederation of neighboring peoples. Messengers went to and fro between himself and Pharaoh, negotiating for horses and much people; though all the while Ezekiel and Jeremiah protested that Jehovah would certainly punish him for violating his pledge to the king of Babylon. This was a time of unusual activity for the prophets of Jehovah, who strove their utmost to avert a political mistake, founded upon a moral obliquity, and sure to incur terrible vengeance (Ezekiel 17:15-21).

It befell as they feared. Nebuchadnezzar, who was not prepared to brook such infidelity on the part of a subject king, soon put his forces in motion, and prepared to advance across the desert to punish the weak and faithless Jehoiakim. It was during his march on Jerusalem that the incidents narrated in the two following chapters took place  -- the one the proclamation of a fast, the other the gathering of the Rechabites, with other fugitives, into the shelter of the city.

We have no certain clew to the prophet's history during these three or four years. His heart must have been filled with the patriot's anguish as he saw the coils of invasion drawn closer around the devoted city. To him, indeed, it was the year of drought, and there was no hope save in God; and often upon his lips must have been words like those which the great Florentine addressed to the city which he loved with the passionate affection which the Jews always cherished toward Jerusalem: "Thy sins, O Florence, are the cause of these stripes. But now repent, offer prayers, become united. I have wearied myself all the days of my life to make known to thee the truths of the faith and of holy living, and I have had nothing but tribulations, derision, and reproach."
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
XII.  THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(Jeremiah 36:23.)

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again:
The eternal years of God are hers;
But error, vanquished, writhes in pain,
And dies amid her worshipers."

WE are admitted to the prophet's private chamber, where he is keeping close that he may not excite the acute animosity and hatred of the people. Baruch, his trusted friend, a man of rank and learning, sits writing with laborious care at the dictation of the prophet, whose soul is borne along by the impulse of the Divine Spirit. "Tell us now," the princes said afterward to Baruch, "How didst thou write all these words at his mouth?" Then Baruch answered them, "He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book."

When the roll was filled, Jeremiah, not venturing to go into places of public concourse, intrusted it to Baruch, and bade him read it to the assembled crowds. Jerusalem just then was unusually full. From all parts of Judah people had come to observe the great fast which had been proclaimed in view of the approach of the Babylonian army. Adopting the cry which Jeremiah had so fervently deprecated, "The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, are these," and imagining that there was a special virtue in the Temple precincts, the multitudes had crowded thither in an agony of fear, hoping by their black veils and covered lips and heart-rending cries to propitiate the Almighty and avert the fate that seemed imminent.

Choosing a position in the upper court at the entry of the new gate to the Lord's house, Baruch commenced to read, while the people stood densely massed around him. Amid the awestruck crowd was a young man, Michaiah, the grandson of Shaphan, who was so impressed and startled by what he heard that he hastened to acquaint the princes, then sitting in council in the chamber of the chief secretary of state, in the royal palace. They in turn were so aroused by what he told them that they sent him back to the Temple, and asked Baruch to come without delay and read the prophet's words to them. He came at their request, and sitting among them commenced to read.

In the group of princes were several notable men: Elishama, the secretary of state; Elnathan, the father-in-law of the king, who had brought the prophet Urijah back from Egypt to die; and others. A great fear fell upon them as they heard those ominous words, which were probably closely similar to those recorded in the twenty-fifth chapter of this book. Though they had joined in the general hatred of the prophet, they were deeply sensible that there was everything to justify him in his prognostications of coming trouble; and it seemed their plain duty to acquaint the king with the contents of the roll.

Before doing so, however, they counseled Baruch and Jeremiah to conceal themselves, for they well knew the despotic and passionate temper of Jehoiakim; and the roll was left in the chamber of Elishama. It would appear that in the first instance they thought a verbal statement of the words they had heard would suffice. This, however, would not satisfy the king, who bade Jehudi fetch the roll itself. It was winter, the month of December; the king was occupying the winter-quarters of his palace, and a fire was burning brightly in the brazier. It is a vivid picture -- the king sitting before the fire; the princes standing around him; Jehudi reading the contents of the roll; consternation and panic reigning throughout the city and darkening the faces of the prostrate crowds in the Temple courts. As Jehudi began to read, the royal brow knit, and symptoms of a tempest of anger showed themselves. After the scribe had read three or four columns, Jehoiakim snatched the roll from his hand, and, demanding the penknife which he carried as symbol and implement of his calling, began to cut the manuscript in pieces, which he flung contemptuously into the fire. The worst have some compunctions, and for the most passionate there are warning voices that remonstrate and plead. So was it with King Jehoiakim. Delaiah, Gemariah, and even Elnathan tried to dissuade him from his purpose, but in vain. Nothing could stop him until the whole roll was cut to pieces, and every fragment consumed. Not content with this flagrant act of defiance, he gave orders for the immediate arrest of Jeremiah and Baruch -- an order which his emissaries attempted to execute, but in vain.
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